Silicon Valley scares Americans: Column

Apr. 7, 2014
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Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. / Paul Sakuma, AP

by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, USATODAY

by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, USATODAY

Silicon Valley has a trust problem, and it's growing. Some of this is the result of National Security Agency spying - and the tech community's cooperation with same - and some of it is based on other things tech leaders are doing. But the worst of it is based on who our tech overlords have become.

The NSA spying has already done harm enough. As Glenn Derene warned in Popular Mechanics when the story first broke, fear of NSA spying is giving a boost to offshore competitors, as companies and users seek hardware and software without back doors and compromised security standards. Some foreign customers feel betrayed by Google, Facebook, and other tech giants.

But even at home, the tech community is hurting. According to a study by Harris Interactive last week, people are actually reducing their Internet usage because of the Edward Snowden revelations and general fears about privacy. The study found that 47% say they have changed their behavior online, and 26% say they're doing less online shopping. Among younger users, aged 18 to 34, the online shopping number was 33%. The Wall Street Journal quotes Stephen Cobb of information security company ESET: "In the technology industry, companies are finding that the sales cycle is getting longer, as customers ask questions such as whether an Internet router is NSA proof. 'People are asking questions they didn't ask before. To be in this place now, given the history of this industry, is just amazing. There is a level of suspicion and confusion we haven't had before.' "

"A level of suspicion and confusion we haven't had before." That's right. And it's made worse by the increasing politicization of Silicon Valley, and the transformation of its leaders from rebels into what Joel Kotkin calls "the new oligarchs," people who once talked about technology as liberation, but who now seem more interested in using technology as an instrument of control. It's not just NSA spying; it's that the companies gather data on everyone, with comparatively little legal oversight.

You might have been OK with that a decade or two ago, when Silicon Valley seemed full of people who would stand up to the Man. Now, they are The Man (or The Woman) in many ways, or in cahoots with them. Might the information you gave to OKCupid be used against you someday? Your only protection, really, is their good nature. And how good is that?

After all, OKCupid dug out political donation data to get a CEO fired. If they're willing to do that sort of thing, how elevated can their standards be, really?

Likewise, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has gotten involved in immigration politics. Can you be confident that Facebook's data will remain private if there's a chance to score points against a political foe? The same holds for Google, Yahoo! and numerous other tech companies that hold a lot of people's data under very limited legal supervision. They're political players now.

In the famous 1984 Apple ad, technology - and by extension, the world of technology companies - was presented as the enemy of control. And in the past, when people proposed laws to regulate data-gathering and collection by tech companies, tech lords benefited from the presumption that they were the good guys. As perceptions of them change, that presumption is fading. Expect more regulation to follow.

But no system of regulation will inspire the kind of trust that the tech leaders once enjoyed for free. They may come to miss it, in time.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.